Phenolic resins have excellent characteristics of heat resistance, mechanical strength, electrical properties, or the like. In particular, a phenolic resin composition using hexamethylenetetramine as a curing agent in a novolac-type phenolic resin has a solid form and therefore has excellent handleability. For these reasons, such a phenolic resin composition is widely used in various applications such as molding materials, laminates, FRP, friction materials, molds, grinding stones, thermal insulating materials, and adhesives.
However, conventional phenolic resin compositions suffer from a problem of a slow curing rate. Therefore, there is a demand to increase the molding speed for the purpose of improving the productivity. To this end, a variety of studies for improvement of curability have been made so far. In such studies, it has been attempted to improve the curability by a method of using a high-ortho novolac-type phenolic resin (for example, see Patent Document 1), a method of mixing an organic acid with a novolac-type phenolic resin and hexamethylenetetramine (for example, see Patent Document 2), or the like. However, it cannot be said that these methods have sufficient improving effects on curability, and there may also be a case/where curability does not necessarily contribute to an actual molding speed, so further improvements in molding speed are desired.